Distribution

We—meaning me and Arachis Press—decided a while back to remove our print novels from general distribution. They will, of course, remain available at the AP store (https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/arachispress). This allows much lower pricing, a third to a half less than books purchased through various online retailers. We never expected physical bookstores to carry them, though in theory they could have ordered copies for their customers. Here are links for the two current novels (or one may find them at the Arachis Press site (arachispress.com):

One Summer in the Sun: https://www.lulu.com/shop/sienna-santerre/one-summer-in-the-sun/paperback/product-p8kz7g.html

One Christmas in the Sun: https://www.lulu.com/shop/sienna-santerre/one-christmas-in-the-sun/paperback/product-dwz4z9.html

The ebooks (EPUB and PDF) remain free downloads at Arachis Press. There will also continue to be regular discounts on the print books, posted at the Arachis Press blog (https://arachispress.blogspot.com/).

Naples Airlines

Lockheed Electra

When Harold ‘Mackie’ Macklin flies out of Naples in One Christmas in the Sun, headed back to college in Ohio, he might well have been in ‘this’ plane, operated by Naples Airlines and Provincetown-Boston Airline. The picture here is of a Lockheed Electra in 1966. The airline was founded in 1946 and served Naples for decades (though the Naples Airlines part of the name was dropped in the Eighties).

There was no reason to name the carrier in the novel, of course. Maybe I’ll find a reason to in a sequel, if someone flies again! After all, Lin Summerlin should be coming in for some summer vacation once more in the next planned book. But she flew into Miami in her last appearance and was driven to Naples. Larger carriers flew into Fort Myers, too. I recall seeing big Constellations on the field there when I was a kid. They looked big to me, anyway!

The field in Naples was built during the Second World War as a training facility. The barrack buildings still stood during the time my Sun books are set, the late Sixties. I wouldn’t be surprised if some do yet. They were remodeled as businesses and residences in the post-war period. I have Mackie remember living in one of them when he was a little kid. Admittedly, that was one of my own memories.

Marine Medic

A bit of information I only brushed upon in the two SUN novels, not finding a good spot for expansion (who needs info-dumps, after all?), was that Will Booth did not, strictly speaking, join the Marines. Marine medics are provided by the Navy, even combat medics that end up serving with units in the field. So Will would have been directed to the proper service by his recruiter, undergone basic training with the Navy, and then taken further training as a combat medic at Fort Lejeune.

It is likely I will be able to fit more about this into the next novel. By the summer of 1969, Will will be in Vietnam. He is most unlikely to show up in person in the narrative but will, of course, be a topic among his friends. His romance with Kris is likely to survive at least that long. Long term? We’ll have to find out—which means the author hasn’t quite decided!

I have always intended him to survive the war, however. Killing Will would be a definite cop-out (do folks still use that expression?). He and Kris will have to work out their future eventually. So I suppose I am committing to further sequels, aren’t I?

Continental

 

Continental Mark.IV

When I mention elderly attorney Conrad Summerlin—grandfather of Jam and Jelly—driving an ‘ancient Continental,’ this 1959 Mark IV is pretty much the sort of car I had in mind. Conrad makes a brief in-person appearance in ‘One Christmas in the Sun’ but is mentioned here and there in both Sun novels. I remember just such a car in the early 60s in Naples, stopping to pick up a student at St Ann School (which both Joey and the Summerlin kids are supposed to have attended).

Trains

 

Naples train

The photo is of a passenger train rolling into (or maybe out of) Naples, sometime in the last century. Train service continued into Naples into the early Eighties (but never went much beyond it). There were definitely passenger trains still pulling into Naples at the start of 1969, when I have James Summerlin board one to carry him back to college after Christmas vacation. That, of course, happens in ‘One Christmas in the Sun.’ James is just quirky enough to take the slow way from Naples to Boston. The train depot (and, to some extent, the tracks) does show up from time to time in both my Women in the Sun novels. It was very much of a landmark and now serves as a museum (or something of that sort).

Generic Girl

Ronnie Deerfield was intended from the start to be Generic Girl, a young every-woman without any particularly notable personality traits, unlike her best friends, Joey and Kris. Inevitably, she has grown into something more over the pages of my two Women in the Sun novels; she may remain less colorful but there is plenty going on internally!

Of the trio, she has explored the most, grown the most. Yet her future remains the most open, the most undetermined. Ronnie still has no clear vision for her life. She has not found her passion. She is groping toward what will be, unwilling to commit. That is, perhaps, a good thing.

A good thing for her. Ms. Deerfield has more growth ahead of her—as do her friends, to be sure. I hope to look in on them in the summer of 1969 and see how that goes.

The PIer, 1968

 

view of the Naples Pier, 1968

The Naples pier in the Summer of 1968—the time and place of my novel ‘One Summer in the Sun.’ My characters would have been bicycling right along these streets. Maybe if we look closely we’ll see one! Okay, maybe not. In theory, the fictional Sumerlin house where the kids spend so much time would be a bit off the right-hand side of the picture. Unfortunately, the celebrated pier banyan tree does not show here, but it is one the street that ends at the pier.

The Old Hotel

 

the old Naples Hotel

 
The old Naples Hotel as it was, standing near the pier and what is now the swanky Third Street shopping district in Naples Florida. It had been a landmark since the late Nineteenth Century but was well past its prime when I lived there as a youngster. The place was closed down and demolished decades ago. A new Naples Hotel, looking rather like the original, is now rising in much the same spot. I doubt it will attract quite the same sort of clientele as the old one.

The Hotel has appeared in my Women in the Sun novels, set in the late Sixties, but only in passing, not as a setting for any of the action. It was an object of nostalgia already in 1968. But I remember walking past it on my way to the pier in the evenings, with guests sitting on their screened porches, the scent of citronella wafting into the dusk. That will never come back, whatever they build.

The Summerlin House

One of the frequently used settings in both my Women in the Sun novels is the Summerlin House (aka the Salas House). This is a completely fictional building on the Naples beach, a little north of the pier. I don’t specify exactly how far north but we can assume two to four blocks; of course, there is no such real house at any of those locations (though one may find similar houses along the beach).

The house was—or so my protagonists understand—built in the late Twenties. That makes sense but if it was a few years later, it’s not going to hurt anything. The Salas family, wealthy Cubans, purchased the place in the Forties. When Maria Salas’s husband passed, she inherited and a little later married local lawyer Preston Summerlin. Hence the Summerlin House name.

All that matters to our story is that the Summerlin twins, Angelica and James—know as Jelly and Jam—make our ‘triumvirate’ of young women welcome there. Outside more than in; it becomes a site for goofing off when they want to go to the beach and more than one summer party is held on the spacious lawn. Fairly spacious, that is. Beachfront property is dear and folks are not likely to waste a lot of space on grass.

Nor is the house itself that large. Two stories, stucco over block, tile roof—very ‘Spanish.’ Remodeled from time to time, of course, since its original construction. It’s the sort of house that’s likely to get torn down and replaced these days, with the land under it being more valuable than the house itself.

We have drawn up a house plan. Very useful in helping to visualize the story! I think it is a pretty accurate rendition of what I had in mind. The Summerlin House will most definitely appear in future novels of my trio, though I suspect it will become less central to their lives.

For now (i.e. the late Sixties) it remains a place they will still be able to get together with their friends, beneath the tall coconut palms and hibiscus, and forget the tumultuous outside world for a little while.

the Summerlin House

 

Pen Name

Sienna Santerre is (or should be) pretty obviously a pen name. I purposely chose something that sounded a bit made-up and created a fictional character to be Sienna Santerre.

Why use a pen name at all? In part, to distance the ‘real’ me (who may be just as fictional when it comes down to it) from the subject matter of my books. That real me did graduate from Naples High in 1968. I did go through those times. I did know the kids that inspired some of my characters and would just as soon—if by chance they read my books and recognized something of themselves—they didn’t link any of it to me. Not that I've actually hidden my real name.

And not that I would fear an angry mob of codgers coming for my blood. Still, it freed me up, some, to write what I wanted, without any caution.

I’ll admit the name choice was perhaps inspired,  a little, by Elena Ferrante. After all, we both write about Naples, even if one sets her stories in Naples, Italy, and the other in Naples, Florida! To be sure, Santerre is a French name, not an Italian one.

Yes, we both write our fiction around a core of female friendship but there is not much resemblance beyond that. My characters live in a very different world, reflecting the culture and politics of the late Sixties. And, of course, they date surfers.

My second Women in the Sun novel came out on August 6, 2022. There may well be more in the series in time; I certainly didn’t wrap everything up with ‘One Christmas in the Sun,’ although it wouldn’t hurt a thing if I stopped there. I have ideas and notes and all of that, to be sure. We’ll just have to see—yeah, me too. I like to surprise myself.

Note: what with SS being a pen name, I am also turning out stories under other names, so I'm not malingering!

Not-So-Little Women

I admit it: I had never read “Little Women” (nor even seen any movie versions). However, it has been pointed out to me that my two Women in the Sun novels have parallels to Alcott’s book, so I decided to read through it.

And, yes, I can see it, most notably in my Joey character. Her name is even similar to Jo! That, I assure you, was totally unintentional. I in fact named her for a real-life Joey I know. She is tall and assertive and a bit ‘boyish’ but that is about as far as it goes. Joey is also Italian and Catholic and more prone to sarcasm than to Jo’s sort of New England moralizing.

The ‘sisters’ here are by choice, not blood. Three best friends all through school and now facing the adult world. My actual fear when I began was that my story might be compared to quite different books, set in a different Naples (Italy, that is, not Florida), the novels of Elena Ferrante. I steered as far from that as possible.

As Jo, my Joey has thoughts of being a writer. Unlike Jo, she is not a thinly-disguised version of the author. Even more so in that ‘Sienna Santerre’ is a pen name and, in a sense, another character I have created. So maybe Joey is Sienna? I don’t know. I’m as confused as you, now.

Sequels

When I wrote ‘One Summer in the Sun,’ I had no idea whether there would be a sequel. The novel does stand on its own, with its own resolution. Yes, our three protagonists would go on with their lives. Yes, a reader might well be curious about those lives. But ‘One Summer’ does not need more than what I wrote.

None the less, I thought about the young women’s future quite a bit as I was writing, coming up with all sorts of ideas and scenarios—ones interesting enough (to me) fuel a sequel or two. Maybe more than two! So I wrote ‘One Christmas in the Sun,’ set a few months later and continued their stories, added new characters, new situations. Again, the second novel can stand on its own, requiring no sequel. It could be advantageous to read ‘One Summer’ first, but it is certainly not essential.

Where might I take the series next? It is a series now, I suppose! The next summer (1969) is the most likely setting, when everyone is together again, home in Naples, done with the first year of college. I am in no hurry to write that book, but I have been working on ideas for it. I’ve played with various titles. Maybe ‘Third Avenue’ or ‘The Sophisty-Kates Club.’ Or something else; the story itself will ultimately determine that.

Vehicles Two

I have posted pictures of a few vehicles that showed up in “One Summer in the Sun,” set in the summer of 1968. Now for a couple from Christmas vacation a few months later.

Rambler Classic Wagon

The first is Alan Wesolowski’s AMC/Rambler Classic station wagon, vintage 1963. It is white, like the one pictured, but of course has surfboard racks on the top. This is the car some of the gang rode to the east coast in ‘One Summer’ and he and Joey have been taking to college in Fort Myers from time to time (when they don’t go in her Corvair).

 

VW Squareback

In ‘One Christmas in the Sun’! Angelica’s parents surprise her with a red VW Squareback like this on Christmas morn. Yes, she wanted a van but decided this was pretty nice too. She’ll be driving it back to the University of Miami in January.

Integration and Invention

I remember, when I was very small, my father driving into what was essentially a black slum in Naples. I am fairly sure it was in connection with hiring construction workers; Dad had always been comfortable with working with blacks, both in Naples and Ohio. He’d basically grown up with them, men who worked for his own father’s construction company up north.

Where exactly was it located? I could not tell you now. It was not the later River Park neighborhood. Or I don’t think so! I do remember the shabby little houses, the dirt roads. Mostly I remember the puppy we came home with. That made a much bigger impression on me.

I relied on both memory and research in locating the black neighborhoods as they existed in the time of segregation and shortly thereafter. They do play a part in “One Christmas in the Sun.” If I were uncertain of some detail—having conscientiously researched—I made up something plausible. A best guess. It is ultimately fiction, after all.

The timeline for the integration of schools in Naples may not be completely right, though I do know when the ‘black’ high school finally shut down and the last of its students went to Naples High. But integration had already been going on for a decade and more, and I reflected this in Will Booth showing up at Lake Park Elementary in the fourth grade.

The fact is, there was never a particularly large black population in Naples. Out of over two hundred graduates, only four black seniors were part of the class of 1968—and none of them had the least resemblance to Will.

At one point, before starting the first Women in the Sun novel (“One Summer in the Sun”), I did consider not using the name Naples for my setting, but creating a fictional analog. But there were so many details of the real town I wanted to use that I decided it was best to call it Naples. I am okay with that decision—and with whatever fiction I have mixed with reality.

That includes the characters themselves, of course. They are fictitious and ‘any resemblances to actual persons are coincidental,’ as the stock disclaimer has it. But real persons inspired me. Real places and real events inspired me to create the Naples of my stories.

Musical Chairs

Creating ‘musical chairs’ relationships in ensemble stories such as my Women in the Sun novels is a definite temptation—and one best resisted. I am sure you know what I mean by this. Couples break up and switch around love interests. We become invested in our characters and want to see how a new combination would work out. Such explorations can be intriguing.

The popular sit-com “Friends” did this with their characters. They shuffled relationships around a few times before landing on the final versions. That wasn’t the only show to do it, of course. It is almost a cliché with comedies of that sort.

And so, best avoided in our fiction, as much as we might like to see so-and-so with such-and-such. There are better and fresher ways to explore relationships. We shouldn’t be afraid to bring in new characters and allow former love interests to fade away, as they tend to do in real life. I admittedly have no idea who my characters will wind up with a few books down the line (assuming I get to write those books). I’ve left their futures open-ended. It would be far too tedious to write about them if I knew everything that was going to happen!

I admit to being guilty of just a little of the musical chairs approach. It seems possible Ronnie’s former boyfriend, Alan, is going to have a relationship with her best friend, Joey. Or will all that foreshadowing go to waste? Beyond that, your guess is every bit as good as my own.

 

Hippies

By the time my two ‘Women in the Sun’ novels* are set, 1968 and the beginning of 1969, hippies were part of the culture. I have had characters use the term—mostly older characters and in a derogatory sense, admittedly. But true hippies, true young counter-cultural sorts, were exceedingly rare in a rather conservative southern town like Naples.

This, of course, didn’t keep the clothes from showing up! Fashion goes everywhere and television helped spread it more quickly than ever. Hair grew longer. Flared jeans replaced narrow-legged ‘mod’ trousers. Paisleys and flowers appeared on shirts, and both sexes took to wearing beads.

Do any of my characters embrace the hippie lifestyle? Not really and not yet; things may and probably will change if I continue the story of my ‘triumvirate’ of young women. They are not quite the hippie generation, in truth. Older brothers and sisters who had moved on to other places would have been more likely to adopt the hippie culture. By the time of my tales, the world was already leaving the Sensational Sixties behind and slipping toward the Cynical Seventies.

Peace and love and optimism were becoming the casualties of the changing times. Nixon had been elected president in the USA. Things seemed grimmer than they had a year or two before, during the ‘Summer of Love,’ during the height of the counter-culture. The ’68 riots at the Democratic convention Chicago pointed the direction things were going.

And in ’69, Woodstock shared the summer with the Manson murders, while the war in Vietnam ground on. But hippie culture lingered on, lingered at least through the first half of the Seventies, though not with the vigor and freshness of the previous decade.

Will any of my characters become, in any sense, hippies? I think we can see that James embraced some of what was going on. He was the one who traveled, who got away from the narrower world the others inhabit. It is just possible he will be the one to ‘drop out.’ Or not! We shall simply have to wait and see what happens to him and his friends.

Birth Control

Pregnancy did not come up in “One Summer in the Sun” nor in the sequel. It just might in the next book, if I write it someday. Not any of our ‘triumvirate,’ to be sure, but perhaps an acquaintance. I have ideas for this (it would probably not be Paulette, the black friend introduced in "One Christmas in the Sun;” that comes off cliched).

Birth control was not so simple a matter in 1968. It was not always easy for an unmarried woman to have access to ‘the pill.’ I mentioned in ‘Summer’ that Kris’s mother had made sure she would, and Kris (undoubtedly with Mom’s input) helped Ronnie when she asked for advice. That was fortunate, as Ronnie ‘lost’ her virginity (is that like misplacing it?) in the course of the story.

Joey remains a virgin—and a Catholic—but we can be sure she has given the question its due consideration. After all, she is going to have sex eventually. I’m not going to keep her from it forever!

Be all that as it may, pregnancy and birth control were important factors in life then, just as important as Vietnam and the draft, or racism. The ‘sexual revolution’ had arrived and I am certainly not going to ignore it. But one can fit only so much in one book (and have it remain readable).

Naples Locales

Although they are situated in the ‘real’ Naples, I have not pinned down the exact locations of most of my characters’ homes in “One Summer in the Sun” and its sequel, “One Christmas in the Sun.” The Summerlin house is on the beach, a ‘little’ north of the pier, but I’m not specifying whether that is two, three, or four blocks. Somewhere in there! Nor is it based particularly on any actual house I know. It’s pretty much generic, the sort of place being built in the Twenties and Thirties.

Kris Greene and family would be somewhat further south and closer to the bay. Thirteenth? Fourteenth? Maybe, or possibly a tad further. But not as far as where Gordon ‘Grubby’ Rhein lives with his folks. That just might be in the Aqualane neighborhood.

Ronnie Deerfield is a good bit further north, just south of the Beach Golf Course. Broad Court, perhaps, or Sixth Avenue North? Close to them anyway. The Penns, incidentally, are somewhere around a half-dozen blocks further south and a little further west. And Joey is pretty much just on the other side of Highway Forty-one, aka the Tamiami Trail, as is the office of Ronnie’s dad, architect Howard Deerfield.

I have placed Joey in more-or-less the house I lived in when I was small. Joey, of course, is no longer small and her family has stayed put there all her life. The house is located on Eighth Terrace in the Lake Forest subdivision.

I’ve seen pictures of it and I know those old ‘Florida houses’ being built after WW2 and through the Fifties. Other styles became popular then, but the flat-roofed concrete block cottage was pretty common. With Terrazzo floors, more often than not, and jalousie windows. Air conditioning was still a rarity in the Fifties, so it was windows open on summer nights, and fans blowing.

Screens kept out the mosquitoes, for the most part, but the minuscule sand flies (the southwest Florida variant of the no-see-um) often found their way in. Folks attempted to grow grass in the sandy yards but sand spurs inevitably sprang up. In vacant lots, those were the norm. Here and there, one of the big pines would be left standing. That would be true in Ronnie’s neighborhood too.

The black characters I’ve mentioned mostly live in neighborhoods off Goodlette Road, but we haven’t visited any of their homes yet. That could certainly change. And the Wesolowskis are way up north in Pine Ridge. Or just outside Pine Ridge, maybe. Too far for any of the girls to be riding their bikes back and forth!

None of this is necessary to the reader but it helps me to able to look at a map and point out the neighborhoods, the routes they use for biking, walking, driving, the stores, the parks, and so on. It helps also to find house plans not too unlike the residences I have envisioned (or even sketch something myself). I like having a physical environment where I can set my characters down.

 

Catholic Porn

Catholic literature is rarely pious. In ways that sometimes trouble or puzzle both Protestant and secular readers, Catholic writing tends to be comic, rowdy, rude, and even violent. ~ Dana Gioia

My “One Summer in the Sun” has been jokingly (I hope) referred to as ‘Catholic porn.’ It is true there is a certain amount of Catholicism in it. It is also true there is adult content—graphic sex. I do not see much, if any, conflict between the two.

That is because both are about passion. Religion should be passionate; it should be a love affair. As should life! There is certainly a long tradition of spiritual passion among the mystics of Catholicism, a tradition of embracing God’s creation. But that is not what ‘One Summer’ is about. Not really. I did not set out to write a ‘Catholic novel’ in any sense.

Catholicism plays a fairly small role. Yes, one of the three main protagonists in “Summer” is a practicing Catholic. Yes, a major secondary character is considering the priesthood. And yes, I grew up in the church and am Catholic. I suppose that makes me a ‘Catholic writer’ in at least some sense of the word.

And it does shape my views and my views, in turn, shape the story. If one wishes to read the sexual scenes as porn, so be it. For me, they were inseparable from that story. That story is about friendship and searching and love and, yes, passion.

Guitars

There is a certain amount of guitar playing in the pages of ‘One Summer in the Sun.’ Only one of my three main protagonists is a player, and she only fools about with an inexpensive instrument from Sears until she becomes involved with Alan. Her father plays too, being a folk music enthusiast, and keeps his prized Martin classical guitar tucked away under the bed. Yes, like Willie Nelson plays, but in those days the ‘name’ players were guys like Burl Ives and Marty Robbins.

Alan owns a Gibson Hummingbird and has bluegrass tendencies. The precision of that style of playing appeals to him. Of course, he flat-picks the instrument and is pretty proficient at it, though not inclined to show off. When chided about his taste in guitars by James ‘Jam’ Summerlin, he responds that Keith Richards claims it is the perfect acoustic for rock and roll.

Jam’s twin sister, Angelica aka ‘Jelly,’ is a musical prodigy, a player of the classical guitar. I did not specify a particular maker, only that it was a high end Spanish instrument. Her parents can afford it. And they could certainly afford to buy Jam a good guitar too, though he is less serious (although talented) about playing. I gave him a Gibson F-25, their ‘Folksinger’ model from the Sixties. He hadn’t pulled it out of the closet and played in a couple years, but being among players during summer vacation led him to renew his acquaintance with the guitar.

 

a Gibson F-25

By the way, the one in the included picture is set up for metal strings (slanted bridge) but it’s essentially the same instrument as the nylon stringed guitar Jam plays.

So why did I make some of my characters guitar players? It was certainly a way of letting them bond; they are rather different people otherwise. Then too, I know a little about guitars and music. Mostly, the guitars just seemed a fitting symbol of that time, the summer of 1968, and my slightly naive, innocent bunch of kids